Silence fell again. Fanny’s small tattered shoes were stretched towards the warmth, toes touching. Her mouth fell slowly open.
The boy got up and tip-toed out. Better to help Uncle Perry than sit and do nothing. Sleep was impossible until the doctor had left.
Down in the restaurant a single gas jet cast its anaemic light upon the ruins. For a moment Anthony could not see his uncle and supposed him to be brushing up the floor. But further inspection showed him to be sitting at the little corner window table where all the trouble had begun. He was resting from his labours.
Anthony’s rubber soles made no sound until he stepped upon a piece of glass. Uncle Perry jumped a visible inch and glared at the boy.
‘Belay there! Damn me, I thought it was a ghost! Never wear rubbers, boy; they’re an invention of Old Scratch himself.’
Anthony saw that there were three bottles on the table, and two were empty. Uncle Perry had been resting from his labours almost since they began.
‘Sorry; I thought perhaps I could help. I … don’t feel like sleep.’
Perry was not long in recovering his temper.
‘Don’t go away; don’t go away. Of course, you don’t feel like sleep. No loving nephew would at a time like this. Nor do I; no more do I; that’s why I’m down here trying to think of something else. I’ve worked myself to a standstill. Have a taste of rum?’
‘No, thanks, Uncle Perry. I’ll just wait down here till the doctor goes.’
‘So you’ve been for him? There’s a good lad. I said you would. I said, “Young Anthony’s got the fastest legs of any of us. Why ask me?” I said, “I’m good for nothing tonight. I’m out of sorts myself. I’m worried about Joe,” I said. “ It’s the anxiety that’s getting me down.” I’m a – an abstemious man, Anthony; anyone’ll tell you that, but the anxiety over Joe is getting me down. I’d got to do something, so I came down here and began clearing up.’
Anthony perceived that he had mistaken the nature of the relationship between the two brothers; evidently the way they barked at each other sometimes only disguised their real affection. He forgave Uncle Perry for getting drunk.
He shivered, having cooled off from his run. ‘It’s a bit cold down here.’
‘Get a glass,’ said Perry. ‘ Ever tasted rum, boy? That’ll warm your lights. Go on, there’s nothing to be afraid of.’
The boy brought a glass and sipped at the liquid Uncle Perry put in it. He thought he had never tasted anything so vile: sweet and sticky and hot in the throat. When it was gone he shivered worse than ever.
‘It’s the starting that matters,’ said Perry, pushing back his hair. ‘It’s the first drop that counts. The first teeny drop. Once you’ve taken a sip there’s no turning back, no innocence any more. Life’s like that; I tell you, boy, take it from me. You drink a glass of rum or have a bit of lovey-dovey, and where does it lead? Nobody knows; you’ve started something and ’ve got to follow it; one thing leads to another; see what I mean? It isn’t that a man’s bad – nor that he’s good – it’s just following a lead. Often it’s just being good-natured; nothing more than that; no intentions of any sort, and then where are you? They say who rides on a tiger … But which of us isn’t in that fix? Can I get down? Can you get down? We’re all on our own tigers which – which we’ve fed for a bit of sport or brought up from being a cub; and – and now we wish we hadn’t …’
The rum was warming the boy. Sleepy in spite of himself, he gazed out across the harbour. There were two lights on the water, that of the setting moon and that of the dawn. The reflection of the moonlight was like tinsel silver, twinkling, without colour, except a suggestion of coffee brown in the water not immediately caught by it. The dawn light was a pure cold blue glimmering on the water like a shield.
‘What’s that?’ asked Uncle Perry, peering towards the shadowy stairs.
‘I didn’t hear anything,’ Anthony said after a moment.
‘I thought maybe it was the doctor. I thought it was him or somebody else. I thought it was. But there you are, mistaken again.’ He drained his glass and the lock of hair fell back from his forehead. This morning hour seemed to have caught Perry in a strange mood. He was not his usual jovial buccaneering self. Even Perry had his moments of doubt.
‘Shall I go up and see?’
Perry tapped the boy on the shoulder. ‘I know how you feel. I know what it’s like to be young. You think you know everything at that age. But the older you grow the more you see your mistake. The world’s a snare, boy, make no mistake of it. And everybody in it. Everybody’s different. Like – like the trees in a forest. Some’s crooked; some’s straight. Some’s healthy; some’s got moss on ’em. Some’ll stand any storm; others’ll fall at the first puff. Some’s got fruit that’s good to pick; some hasn’t. And you can’t tell. That’s my meaning, boy: you can’t tell. Not the cleverest person in the world can tell what’s behind a face. They think they can, but they can’t. It’s been a shock to me … Many times it’s been a shock to me. It shakes your nerve. You don’t know where you are. Then before you can say knife you’re riding somebody else’s tiger …’
Silence fell. Uncle Perry’s disjointed allegories were too much for Anthony. Eyes pricking, he watched the shadowy light grow in the east, slowly gaining ascendancy until it penetrated into this room, showing up new outlines of disordered chairs and tables, whitening a pile of broken crockery, driving before it the dismal defeated light of the flickering gas jet. Unnoticed, Uncle Perry’s face had also emerged, wan and bloated and strained. When he poured himself a drink the bottle neck went tat-a-tat against the side of the glass.
The doctor had been here a long time. He could not have gone for they would have heard his footsteps.
Day was coming. Clouds high in the sky had begun to flush. They reflected a terracotta stain upon the opal blue of the harbour. Seagulls had begun to wheel and cry.
Suddenly there was a footstep behind them. Uncle Perry knocked over his glass. They had both expected to see the doctor, but it was Aunt Madge.
The monumental calm was shaken. ‘Very tired,’ she said distantly. ‘Brandy or something …’
‘Well?’ said Perry, and his mouth twitched.
‘About the same. Dr Penrose is doing all he can. Touch and go, he says …’
Perry wiped his forehead. ‘Poor Joe.’
‘Brandy or something,’ said Aunt Madge. ‘I feel … can’t stand it.’
Perry put some rum into Anthony’s glass. ‘This’ll do.’
She kept pausing to wipe her eyes while she sipped it.
‘What does he say?’ said Perry anxiously.
She waved her glass in sudden irritation. ‘Joe’s right: doctors pretend to know. Anthony.… should be in bed.’
Perry slumped back in his chair. ‘I’ve had an awful night …’
‘You? You’ve done nothing. There’s …’
‘It’s the waiting. All of you up there and me down here. Me thinking of poor Joe and doing nothing to help. Not able to do anything; you know, Madge, it isn’t so easy as you think when a brother goes down like this – stricken down in his fifties; when we were kids; it reminds you of that time; we used to go out in a row-boat together; used to fish for dabs; used to bathe up the river; he was a big boy then, or so he seemed to me; there was six years, you know; that’s a difference when you’re kids; now it don’t seem much; those days I never dreamed there’d come a time when I should sit here while Joe lay upstairs; it shakes you up more than you’d think, more than I thought. Blood will tell, you know; blood’s thicker than water; you don’t think so till it comes to the test; at a time like this. Honest to God, Madge, I’d – I’d rather …’
Aunt Madge had risen to her feet again. She looked down upon Perry from an altitude, remote as a snow-covered peak, frozen and impersonal and secretive. ‘How do you think I feel? Ill myself. Husband. Lonely. Got to carry on. Not sit there. Some have got to do. To act. Not sit there over a glass. Where should we be if everyone sat over a glass?
Where should we be if I’d done nothing all this night? Anthony …’
The boy got up sleepily and stood beside her. ‘All right.’
‘Let him stay here,’ said Perry argumentatively. ‘ He’s company for me. If you’re going I’ll have no company; it’s too late to go to bed now; we can sit here. I’ll light a fire. I’ll get Fanny to light a fire and we’ll sit down here; it’ll help to brighten things up; then when it’s light we’ll go on with clearing away the mess; somebody’ll have to clear the mess; if the boy goes to bed now he’ll sleep till midday. We might need him before then. You don’t want to go to bed, do you, boy?
‘Not if I can help.’
‘There’s the boy. We’ll stay down here together, Madge, if it won’t affect you. We’ll be anxious to know –’
‘Anthony,’ Aunt Madge said, as he was about to reseat himself.
He straightened up again.
‘Quite light now,’ she said. ‘You can clear up, Perry. But –’
A voice came from upstairs. It was Patricia calling her. ‘Aunt Madge! Aunt Madge!’
Ponderous in her haste, the older woman left them. With a premonitory chill Anthony watched her climbing the stairs. There had been something in Patricia’s voice which told its own story. Joe Veal, for all his tenacity, had this time met an opponent who was going to get the better of him. Standing in the battered restaurant with the first full light of day creeping among the final shadows, his nephew knew this as surely as if he already heard the toll of a requiem bell. He knew it, and he was afraid.
From behind him came a tat-a-tat as Uncle Perry shook more rum into his glass.
Chapter Fourteen
The death of Smoky Joe and the other events of that August night had consequences which completely changed the lives of those concerned in them.
Everything came to a standstill. To the boy, who had known only the busy routine of Joe Veal’s when it was in full working order, the silence which fell was peculiarly oppressive. It was as if he had been in a railway terminus and there had been an accident out on the line and the station had suddenly emptied. In such a case he would no doubt have wandered at will, through the turnstiles, past the ticket office, through the luggage departments and back upon the deserted platform. So now he found himself at a loose end, sitting in one or other of the empty restaurants, mooning through the kitchen, passing into the larder, where quantities of uncooked food gradually became offensive, standing in the shop behind drawn blinds allowing his fingers to play with the keys of the automatic till.
Not that there was no activity at all on the closed premises, but none of it concerned him. Everyone had more time, but no one had any attention to spare him, not even Patricia.
There were the endless visits from old customers and friends who came round with suitably grave faces and talked and drank cups of tea in the kitchen. There were the relatives: Aunt Louisa from Arwenack Street, a small tight woman with varicose veins, received with statuesque dignity by Aunt Madge. There was a cousin from Percuil and a second cousin from Mawnan Smith. By virtue of their relationship they stayed much longer than anyone else, sitting back purse-lipped in a corner while others came and went. By tactful stages they steered the conversation round to money matters and Joe’s belief in blood ties; but Aunt Madge said Joe was very reserved about his private affairs, Joe’s financial arrangements were a closed book to her, she’d left everything to Joe, all that would have to come out later, when the proper time came they’d be told if there was anything for them. With that they had to be content.
Then there were the men in silk hats and black suits with shiny elbows who came and went furtively with a sort of shop-soiled grief. They spent some time in the lonely room with the blinds drawn in the front of the house and later returned with something bulky which was manoeuvred with difficulty up the crooked stairs.
Joe might have been flattered had he been able to see and appreciate the gap his disappearance left in the lives of his relatives and how much they felt his loss. Patricia went about the house with her face full of tears: they were there impending but would not fall; her eyes were like flowers which had cupped the rain. Uncle Perry was hardly seen at all: he was up in his bedroom and only appeared for an occasional meal, puffy and pale, or when he wanted another bottle. Even little Fanny sniffled about her duties.
As for Aunt Madge, she said she could not sleep, and appearances bore her out. During those first three days of gloom and waiting, when the whole house seemed oppressive with what it contained, she sat nearly the whole time listlessly in the one armchair in the kitchen, dozing before the fire and waking suddenly with a jerk to stare about at the familiar scene as if she did not believe it was still there. She seemed to need company and she seemed particularly fond of the kitchen. Even the closest relatives were never invited upstairs.
It was as if the shadow of mortality had brushed close beside her and she needed the reassurance of all the most familiar things of her everyday life. Anthony wondered how, just from a physical point of view, she could stay in one room for such a long time without moving.
On the day of the funeral there was a marked improvement in her bearing. She came down in an impressive dress of fine black silk with great cascades of lace pouring down the front like the Zambesi Falls and began to busy herself making sandwiches for the mourners when they returned. For the first time she seemed conscious of the full dignity of her position as the Widow of the Deceased. The three-day siege was nearly over. The last night was gone.
One of the black-coated gentlemen arrived early, and this time she went upstairs with him. Later she came down with an expression on her plump face of having triumphed over a weakness.
When she came into the kitchen she put on a pair of big black earrings and said: ‘Do you wish to see him?’
Anthony waited a moment and then realised that he was the only other person in the room.
‘Who?’ he said in surprise.
‘Uncle. It’s the last chance. Hi thought you might.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ Things moved up and down his spine at the suggestion.
‘His nephew … I thought you might.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘ I’d …’
‘It’s as you like. Haven’t you … black tie?’
‘No, Aunt Madge. This was the nearest.’
‘Go and get one.’ She felt in her bag. ‘Due respect. Round the corner and down the hill. Thought you might have liked to see him. Very peaceful …’
He picked up his cap and ran quickly out to buy his tie. The wind and the spattering rain were refreshing to his skin but still more refreshing to his spirit. They seemed to say to him, ‘ You are young; life for you is here outside; not in there; not in there; life is sweet and wholesome.’
He dawdled about in order to prolong his freedom. He watched a cutter slipping gracefully out of St Mawes Creek. He saw a fisherman returning from a morning’s sport and tried to count the fish in his bag. He stopped at the street corner to talk to a boy he had come to know. They talked about wholesome interesting things, about a catapult, a dog which hunted rabbits, a farmer and an apple tree. At length he could stay no longer; people would be arriving in another few minutes; he must go back to the hushed voices and the drawn curtains and the smell of moss and chrysanthemums.
Aunt Madge was sitting in her favourite chair. She glanced up at the clock as he slipped in.
‘Been playing,’ she said. ‘Not nice to be out and about today. Not seemly. Thought you might have liked to see him for the last night. Nephew and all. I thought you might. But it’s too late now.’
There was some expression in her eyes which suggested she begrudged him his escape.
That night he had another unpleasant dream.
He dreamt he had been down feeding the swans at Swanpool, and on his way back who should be waiting for him at the cemetery gates but Uncle Joe. They walked home together, Joe smoking his foreign-looking pipe. As they walked along he was trying to persu
ade Anthony to do something which Anthony was reluctant to do: the boy could not afterwards remember what, but it seemed a matter of urgency to the old man. While they argued they kept meeting people Anthony had never seen before, thin grey people all going in the opposite direction. Many of them seemed to be moving without walking, like figures in a rifle gallery. Uncle Joe said: ‘These are all my friends; we’re all of a family now.’ As they passed one woman Anthony peered under the hood of her cloak and saw that her head was shrivelled to the size of a clenched fist.
They reached the restaurant. The Joe Veal sign had been torn down; the shop door hung on one hinge and the place looked empty and dark as if nothing had moved in it for years.
Uncle Joe put something into his hand. It was a chrysanthemum flower.
‘This is where I live,’ the boy said. ‘Won’t you come in?’
‘No,’ said Uncle Joe. ‘I’d best be going Home.’
He left him there and Anthony stood alone with the flower in his hand staring at the dark and empty shop. Then he looked down at the flower and saw that it had crumbled to moss.
He dropped it quickly and put his foot on it, feeling the squelch beneath his heel, then stepped up to the threshold of the ruined shop. He knew that he must go in in order to go to bed; but he knew also that something was waiting there for him among the cobwebs and the darkness.
He entered the shop.
Something moved at the back of it. He turned to flee, but his feet were as if bogged in quicksand and the shop had become enormously big and the door of escape a small oblong of light in the distance. He tried to concentrate his attention on the effort of moving his feet but each step he took carried him no further away.
With his eyes wide open the scene did not change. He sat up in bed and it was still there. He was still in the shop; his bed was in the shop and he had been sleeping there. The thing still moved by the stairs and he could still see the lighter oblong of the door with the hump of the automatic till.
He rubbed his eyes, his mind tearing off the fetters of nightmare even more slowly than it had done four nights earlier. He knew he had been asleep and dreaming, but he was still in the shop, still terrified. He knew that if he went outside he would be able to pick up the piece of moss that Uncle Joe had given him. That had just as much reality as the bedclothes he plucked.
The Forgotten Story Page 11